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An abusive foster mother nearly cost Rafael Pearson his life, and now the District has agreed to pay $10 million for placing him with the troubled woman, whose beatings left the boy with massive brain damage.

The settlement, to be paid out in three installments, beginning with a $5 million payment this month, is one of the largest the District has ever agreed to.

But with a lifetime of round-the-clock care ahead of Rafael, the settlement is hardly a windfall, his attorneys say - the agreement is structured to ensure that Rafael's needs are funded for as long as he lives.

Over the next three months, the agreement took shape, and late Friday, after a few final tweaks, the judge in the case, Judith N. Macaluso, approved the pact.

Sitting in the first row of Courtroom 415, in his tiny white Nikes and his black reclining wheelchair, was Rafael. He occasionally uttered sounds, but he cannot speak. Next to him was his grandmother, Sylvia Pearson, 57, who filed the lawsuit on his behalf and who has been his champion since the day in late October 2005 when it looked like Rafael would not survive.

"You can't replace what would have been a great, normal life," Pearson said after the hearing, "but I have faith in him and his ability to progress more rapidly than people expect."

Already, Raffy, as his grandmother calls him, has defied expectations. He made it out of Children's Hospital. He made it out of the Hospital for Sick Children. And by early next year, he is expected to leave the nursing home in Dunn Loring where he has lived for the past five years.

If all goes according to plan, Raffy will move into his grandmother's Fairfax Station home, which is being fitted with an elevator and other accommodations, and where he will have a home health aide around the clock.

It could, of course, have been worse. But it also could have been altogether different for Raffy, born Sept. 9, 2005, in a motel in Northern Virginia.

When his mother, Renee Pearson, brought him to Virginia Hospital Center later that day, he was 5 pounds 14 ounces and had traces of cocaine in his system. Concerned, the hospital called child welfare officials in the District, where Renee Pearson said she lived. The social worker couldn't verify the the mother's address in Northwest Washington and called the baby's grandmother.